Well, if this hasn’t been a year in the making ;). It was literally a year ago this week that I first stepped foot into the nursery and started making plans. I was 5 months pregnant and SURE I would have this nursery done by the time Alivia arrived. And here we are with a 7 month old who has YET to sleep in said nursery, which is really only about 90% done.
This room was probably the biggest project I’ve tackled to date. I had never done board and batten before, and I had never done wallpaper. But, I had to find a way to cover up the “angry birds” theme that was currently on the walls, so I decided to give it a shot.
Here is where we started:
NURSERY BEFORE:
This was clearly not the vibe I wanted and we needed to change it up! So I put together my ideas (see my inspiration HERE), and got to work!
It just so happened that the week I tackled this was the first week the world flipped out and everything shut down. So, with school being cancelled, I recruited my niece to come and help me paint. After primer and THREE coats of paint, we finally covered the Angry Birds up and had a blank slate to work with.
I feel like this project should be titled “what else could go wrong?” I started with my board and batten and decided to save a little money, I would stencil the upper portion of the wall. BIG mistake. The stencil bled really bad, and it wasn’t at all the look I wanted. So I threw away the stencil and ordered wallpaper from Magnolia. That gave me time to get the board and batten completely up before working on the top half.
The board & batten was probably the easiest part of this entire project. I plan to do a full tutorial on that soon! Once my board & batten was up, my mother-in-law came and helped me put up the wallpaper. This was surprisingly easy as well. Wallpaper had always scared me in the past, but the process was super quick! I bought pre-pasted wallpaper, and all you have to do is wet it, fold the edges to activate the paste, and then hang. It’s been up for almost 6 months and I haven’t had any issues with it peeling either.
Mistake #2 in this project was painting the crib. I bought special nursery paint that is safe for infants, and it seemed to be going okay, but once I got the crib inside it started to peel. So we had to strip the entire crib ☹. Then, we ended up using a safe spray paint and that stuck much better, but the finish isn’t exactly what I had imagined. If I could do it all over again- I wouldn’t! I would go out and buy a black crib. LESSON LEARNED!
Last but not least, we installed new carpet! I hated the plaid carpet in this room, and since this is a small room I was able to find a remnant relatively cheap. Now it’s probably my favorite carpet in the whole house! It’s super soft, but not too shaggy or too thin. The perfect carpet!
The “Finished” Project
We are only about 90% done with this room (still need to swap out the light fixture and add some more décor). I’ve struggled so much with the décor on the walls because of the height of the board and batten. Shelving doesn’t seem to fit just right, and I don’t want to put too many holes in the wallpaper. I’m sure I’ll figure out how I want it eventually, but for now it’s going to stay like this.
The Details
And- the details! Here is a list of all the décor and accents in the room:
Crib Bedding (I actually purchased from Spearmint Baby, but Target now offers the same line! I also purchased the quilt from this set)
Stuffed Farm Animals (Pig, Cow, Horse, Sheep)
Prints Above the Crib (the ones I ordered are out of stock, but these are similar)
Egg Chair- (I got this one at Walmart, but it’s out of stock. They do have the kids version in stock though, and we have that one in our play room!)
